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Satellites have taken images of the earth for over 40 years some designed for specific applications but nothing has been designed with the end user in mind. This whistle stop tour presentation will take us back to 1972 with the launch of Earth Resources Terrain Satellite (ERTS-1) which then became known as the Landsat-1 and was the start of the Landsat series (now on its 8th satellite) and I would argue also the start of the commercial usage of Earth Observation data, right up to the present day and beyond as we look at what is upcoming and benefits to geology.

This talk will take us through the challenges and opportunities within the space sector that have led to some fantastic missions both from a technological and operational point of view whilst also touching on how open data has made such a massive impact on our capabilities specifically for geology. Hardware has often been more technologically driven rather than user driven given that a large number of what we might consider ‘geological missions’ have been governmentally funded however it doesn’t mean that commercial missions are not capable of providing useful geological information to support the wealth of challenges faced across oil&gas, mining and engineering sectors the new paradigm here is managing the expectation and associated value proposition such technology provides.

As we move to the current and future era, what’s next and how does this impact geology? Space is changing and the applications are not changing but evolving, leaving more opportunities to build on the legacy that early EO has provided to provide some real value to geological industries both upstream in exploration and logistics as well as downstream in monitoring and remediation. Satellites are not just a one time usage but a multi-purpose toolkit that provide the contextual information not provided by other sources that might have to be procured such as seismic. Their value is in understanding the potential and the information they provide rather than the technology that drives them.

What can these satellites do for you? They provide information to support explporation, context for monitoring and de-risking and above all else are cost efficient to deploy from the safety of your desktop. No technology has the complete answer but satellites provide a big piece of that picture.

Speaker

Charlotte Bishop, Geological Remote Sensing Group

Charlotte is a specialist in remote sensing with over 12 years’ experience of working with satellite imagery in a range of market sectors including Oil&Gas, Mining, Engineering and Environmental applications. She graduated with a BSc in Physical Geography from University of Reading (2005) before starting work at Nigel Press Associates Ltd (now owned by CGG) returning to education to undertake an MSc in Remote Sensing at UCL/ Imperial College in 2006 where her dissertation topic focused on hyperspectral mineral mapping over a copper porphyry system in China using the spaceborne EO-1 Hyperion satellite. She went back to Nigel Press Associates Ltd following her studies where she remained until 2017 as a Remote Sensing Specialist and Project Manager within the Imagery and Data Services team focusing predominately on optical satellite systems and led both projects and master services contracts at a Space Agency level as well as for commercial companies such as major Oil&Gas companies, environmental consultants and mining companies. In May 2017 she was appointed as Technical Business Development Lead for Terrabotics Ltd a Tech Start-up focused on developing and rapidly deploying algorithms, developed using computer vision and A.I. to process and analyse satellite imagery at scale for the Oil&Gas, Mining and Natural Resources market sectors. Products include the generation of detailed high accuracy 3D models along with, and most relevant to this project, 2D/3D change detection and object recognition which are readily supplied to major Oil&Gas and mining companies and environmental consultants globally

During her career she has also held an Associate Editor role for the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation (2015-2017) which produced a 2018 Geological Remote Sensing Special Issue (in press) for which she was Chief Guest Editor and also sits on a number of committees including the OGEO (Oil&Gas, Earth Observation) Committee (now part of the IOGP Geomatics committee), as well as being elected in 2017 as the first female Chairman of the Geological Remote Sensing Group (GRSG – www.grsg.org.uk) a special interest group of the Geological Society and Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society (RSPSoc) founded in 1989.

A self-confessed satellite nerd her passion is to ‘share the love’ of the power of the growing sensor and processing technology available to help meet the challenges faced across a wide range of industries.